Marketers are going to spend a lot of time and effort trying to determine the ROI of social media, when instead, they should just accept the fact that social media is an integral part of any brand marketing.
Social Media ROI
In 2015, three of the top five areas where marketers planned to increase their spending involved social outlets. This year, those investments appear to be turning a profit. The link between social marketing and revenue increased 3x over the last year, with nearly half (48%) of marketers reporting that social media marketing is directly linked to their business’ primary revenue source. Does this mean social media ‘experts” were right? Hardly.
Measure, even if we can’t measure. That seems to be the direction in digital marketing today as vanity metrics, such as shares or likes, don’t directly contribute to the bottom line. Yet marketers will spend a lot of time and money to prove to management that digital marketing is an essential part of any brand strategy.
Social media is taking up a bigger portion of marketing budgets, but few companies said they have been able to quantitatively measure its impact. Despite the increasing investment in social media, it’s still difficult for marketers to quantify their return on investment. Only 15% of marketers in the study said they can show the impact of social media on their businesses using quantitative approaches, while 40% of marketers can only demonstrate the impact qualitatively. Nearly half of marketers said they haven’t been able to demonstrate the impact of social media spending on their business at all.